It's Sunday

Though the weather has remained fine and sunny, a change in wind direction to from the south has brought out the track suit trousers, warms tops and mockies here on the Sunny Coast!

This continuing head and chest cold doesn't help either.  Hopefully I am beginning to improve but I still suffer from chest congestion and nasty bouts of coughing.  Most likely my cold is making feel the cold even more right now.

I did get to the doctor during the week on another matter but my cold has taken precedence now.  I am on new tablets now to ward off any possible infection and to aid clearing my chest.

I did try a bike ride or two but that didn't appear to help with my cold, in other words I was worse than I first thought I was.

So my PC has become my friend again, though even it seems to lose some luster after an hour or so.

I managed to get into town a couple of times for the doctor's visit and some home brew requirements. I got to the Home Brew shop for a couple of mixes of India Pale Ale, a brew I discovered at a boutique brewery in Fremantle W.A.  There was $80 on my 'tab', thanks from happy Android TV box owners after I had helped them out when their boxes failed to update properly.

I have been on the lookout for a light weight cotton jacket, just perfect for up here in that it is very casual and not too heavy to wear.  We just couldn't find exactly what I wanted anywhere, super casual and light weight.  We saw jackets up to $150 which was way out of what I was after.  We even had spent a bit of the cruise day in Brisbane checking out all the stores in the city without any luck

Eventually we found our way into good old K Mart where I spotted almost exactly what I wanted at the price of $35.  So you can imagine how pleased I was when the price scanned at $20! I couldn't pay quickly enough and get out the door.

I managed to get to Computer Club yesterday but probably should have stayed home.  I should be on a spotter's fee credit as I reckon I have sold another Android TV Box to someone there who was after some older TV stuff.

I am finding TV streaming more and more convenient as I get into my TV box more.  But I still get a buzz out of getting great copies of the TV Series episodes I enjoy.  We only have about three episodes of the latest (and final) series of Banshee.

More footy is on TV today so I will wrap myself up and settle down in front of the TV set!  Tonight we will finish off Banshee!

Hectic Couple Of Days

It was great to have our visitors arrive just after lunch on Saturday.  They arrived around 1pm.  Regretfully for me I managed to pick up a full blown version of Trish's recent head cold before their arrival so I have been coughing and spluttering my way throughout their visit.

As usual we ate too much, drank too much and managed to have a great time.  My cold worsened before it improved so by now, Tuesday, just before lunch I am around 90% over it but I remain stuck with that ever present cough I have endured for the last month or so.

I did hit the sack a little earlier than the rest over the last few nights and managed a few good nights' sleep.

Mick worked in the IT field before his recent retirement so we get on famously.  I showed him all over Kodi and he is heading off to give it a go when he gets back home to Newcastle.

Since retirement recently, Mick has become an "Apple" convert and now has his I-Phone, his MacBook and his Apple TV.  Apple doesn't make the installation of 3rd party apps like Kodi easy to add to their devices but it appears where there is a will there is a way.  YouTube guides could show Mick how he can install Kodi on his Apple TV.  How well it works when it is eventually installed there will be up to him to find out.

They have left this morning to catch up with friends for lunch in Brisbane before heading on to the Gold Coast Hinterland for a secluded hideaway spot.  It looks very nice.

Meanwhile we will easily slip back into watching streamed or downloaded shows, bike riding or getting involved with our local organizations.  With the trip to W.A. and the cruise and then home to welcome visitors we have been working hard for over a month now.

The weather is delightful and quite uncharacteristically warm for this time of year.  It remains in the the mid 20's during the day, perfect for sitting and enjoying or walking around outdoors.

Home Safe and Sound

The idea we sail on from Brisbane to Sydney to enjoy sailing through the heads into Sydney Harbour was a good one in theory. 

Most likely we sailed by Caloundra around 1am, we probably arrived at the heads the Heads at about 4am and into Sydney around 7am.  With the sun rising around 6:30 it seemed a great idea in theory but didn't work out so in practice.

But it was still light enough for us to see the Sydney Opera House in the predawn light and the Harbour Bridge as we sailed under it.

Viewing the Sydney city skyline from our balcony was great as well.

We had packed virtually everything the night before, our disembarkation from the Sydney Cruise Terminal to the Airport went well and we arrived with plenty of time to spare.

The flight back to Brisbane was packed.  On our way home we flew over Brisbane's Gateway Bridge, a couple of days earlier we had sailed underneath it.

Our friends were at the airport to greet us and to take us the last 100 or so kilometres back home.

There was little rest for us as we had visitors arriving from Newcastle after lunch on Saturday so there was luggage to unpack, washing to be done, lawns to be mowed, pool to be cleaned and the house needed a spruce up as well.

My cough is kind of under control, Trish's cold is on the mend and the weather here is high 20's, despite it being late May.

In a few days I will post a summary on our Cruise experience with the Princess Line.  Cruising is probably off our agenda for the immediate future.

As I type the major Telstra/Bigpond internet network is suffering from continuous connections and disconnections.  Since I began typing this the net has been off and back on again twice.  As you can guess businesses across the country which depend on this network are going ballistic!

Brisbane and the Final Leg

And so the cruise show rolled into Brisbane. We did the back in Australia Immigration bit, then boarded a shuttle bus and headed into town for a bit of shopping.  An hour or 2 of that was plenty so it was hop on the return bus back to the ship.

Trish's coughing has worsened during the day, not a good thing when you are on a cruise ship! She decided to stay in the cabin and give dinner a miss that night which has was a good move.

We had received our disembarkation instructions. Our Stateroom should be vacated by 8am Wednesday and our disembarkation time was 8:50 am when we would leave the ship, go through customs and hop on a shuttle bus for the airport. Our plane was due for take off around 1pm Wednesday. We had been requested to leave our main luggage cases outside our room by 9pm the night before so we can collect them after disembarkation.  Staff would take all the large bags to the customs area on the wharf for us to collect.

Tuesday would be our final full day on this cruise prior to heading home.

As we sailed south along the Australian coastline we had mobile phone coverage for some of the trip, and a chance for me to post this online.

The photo shows the top deck and the swimming pool.

New Guinea, Alotau

Alotau in PNG was most likely the highlight of the whole cruise. After 4 long days at sea (which probably cured us of the desire to do another cruise in the immediate future) we arrived at Alotau, Milne Bay. Milne Bay was an important battleground during WWII when allied forces, mainly Australian, stopped the advance of the Japanese army towards northern Australia.

It is a pretty basic PNG town, no real large stores as we know it. It had a couple of banks with 15m long queues at any working ATM. So changing money was not going to happen. The local currency is the Kina with an exchange rate of 2.3 Kina to 1 Australian dollar. For convenience all stores offered a 2 to 1 exchange rate, anything to help out the local economy.

The walk into town was a 30 minute trip in the tropical heat so we made an early start. The people were so friendly with heaps of morning greetings coming as we made our way along the streets. It was a lovely small town in a tropical paradise. A cooling sea breeze came in late morning. Trish had a bit of a cold so we grabbed something for her at the one and only chemist in town and wandered around the streets and several markets.

All the time we were approached by locals wanting to know where we were from. Rugby League is the local sport so when they found out we were from Queensland we were quizzed on which NRL team we supported. They knew more about the NRL than I did! But that's not hard.

Kids darted around between us laughing and playing as we walked along. The markets were overpriced but not too extravagantly for our pockets. We bought 2 cans of Coke which cost 5 Kina, we gave the lady $4 and took our drinks and walked away not wanting any change. We had paid her over 9 Kina and she was over the moon with the deal. $4 for 2 Cokes was a great deal for us too we thought.

I had my photo taken with a local guy with a great T-shirt. But he was also enjoying some betel nut at the time. That is the red all over his teeth! Betel nut is a huge favourite in this part of the world.

On our way back to the ship we spotted a small shop as a part of a larger building and Trish said she wanted to have a look around for a few minutes. As we went inside the lady said I was welcome to look around out the back, have a cool drink and take some photos if I wanted. It was actually a hotel with a sensational outdoor bar right on the sea and under an attap roof.

The sea breeze had come in, the local beer was cold and the view from our seats in the semi outdoor bar was of a tropical paradise. (photo above).  After a cool drink we walked back to the ship after a wonderful morning in a beautiful idyllic tropical town.

After arriving back at the ship it was time to sit back and recall our visit to the delightful Alotau.

The next 2 days were spent at sea heading to Brisbane. We had been told that as there was a manageable problem with the ship's engines meaning it couldn't travel at full speed, the visit to Cairns had to be bypassed to conserve time.  In place we would spend the 4 days at sea, 1 day at Alotau and then 2 days at sea until we reached Brisbane. To the novice's eye, the distance from Darwin to Alotau looks almost identical as the distance from Alotau to Brisbane.  The former took 4 days, the latter 2 days.

We seemed to be getting the run around and not being told the truth. It was quite rough for one day on the way to Brisbane, free sea sick bags were available all over the ship. The wind blew a gale outside on the open decks. The rough weather did not bother us.

Our cruise was now heading into its final phase.

2%

Just before we entered the Torres Strait, the ship came to a stop in a spot called The Wednesday Islands, just off the Australian coast. It is quite a picturesque spot. There was a need for a medevac, a passenger required urgent hospital attention so they were transferred to the land for transport to a hospital, most likely via the Flying Doctor.

This wasn't the first medevac of this cruise.   With number of elderly post 80 year olds on board, many using walking sticks, others with walkers and motorised scooters or wheelchairs, you could have expected a couple of medevacs per day.

While the ship waited, word spread quickly that there was mobile phone reception. Our cut price plan accesses up to 98% of the Telstra mobile network and I now know that The Wednesday Islands area falls into that 2% that our network doesn't cover.

It later turned out that most likely the passenger was offloaded to Thursday Island.

Darwin

We were due to dock at Darwin around 7am as our next port of call on the cruise. When the phone went off with notifications of emails, messages or voicemail missed calls at around 5:30 am we knew we were close to land as our phones reconnected with the phone system and came back to life.

We were able to walk easily (around 15 minutes) to the main city area of Darwin despite the tropical heat and humidity from where the ship docked.  It was no hotter than mid summer at home but the humidity was a little higher. Though it was similar to a mid summer's day on the  Sunny Coast, there wasn't the coolish north easterly sea breeze during the afternoon to temper things.

There were older buildings in Darwin beautifully maintained and now in pristine condition (photo above). There were modern hotels and some of the big stores you would see in any modern Australian city. It certainly isn't a large city but looked a fun town to be in.

We found a Telstra Air WiFi point and added photos to earlier posts and did all our updates. Trish even helped an older fellow traveller upload 4 or 5 photos to her Facebook page for her.

By 1:30 we were back on board with my clothes rinsed and drying on the balcony. I did have an icy cold beer in hand as well.

The following 4 days at some sea followed a familiar pattern. Wake, eat, chat, short walk, trivia, cards, eat, chat, relax, drink, sit on our balcony and drink, eat, show, trivia, bed. A quiet one on the balcony was always enjoyable.

The weather continued hot and steamy as we sailed from Darwin across to Milne Bay in New Guinea.  Upon our arrival in Alotau were instantly reminded of our time in Penang, the humidity, the heat and the threat of a storm.

Broome to Darwin

Regretfully the Broome stop for the Sun Princess was disastrous for us and many others. The ship docked around 14k's from the town itself. Passengers were then to be ferried via 12 or so buses between the ship and town. The jetty was under repair and there was only room for one  bus at a time to travel one way or the other.

Rather than lining up 4 buses at a time and loading them all at once and then a convoy of buses head in to town laden with passengers, they did it one bus at a time. There would be several buses lined up ready to take passengers but only the first bus would be loaded.

Upon arrival to catch a bus you were given a numbered ticket and told to wait on  board. Tickets in the 200's were called to board their bus as we arrived at around 11:20 am.  We were issued with tickets in the low 1020's. That the first lot had gone around an hour earlier gave us good reason to believe we had a lengthy wait in front of us (and we were right).

We were told by others that the problem was the jetty construction works and the strict OH&S conditions for the worksite . But to the lay person it appeared that, with a few modifications, you could load several buses at the one time without any problems with OH&S guidelines.  There wasn't any flexibility in anyone's mindset on the dock nor was there senior enough ship's official to push the case.

But what was worse was the lack of communication from the ship's management team to the 100's of waiting passengers on what was happening.  There was no apology, no information no nothing. From comments being made by those waiting, you felt Princess Cruises had lost 100's of future travellers.

We eventually arrived in Broome itself around 2:20. We had to be back on board by 7pm.

The one place we both really wanted to see was Cable Beach so we boarded the "City Tour Bus" and 15 minutes later we were at Cable Beach and it's impressive, long wide sandy beach fronting on to the Indian Ocean. (Photo below).


Broome has a wet season and a dry season. This wet season had been quite dry so the locals were delighted with the 40mls they had received in the morning. And I guess they were even more delighted when another 30mls fell in 20 minutes that afternoon, just as we were stepping onto Cable Beach!

We sought cover (along get with 30 or so others under 2 small bus shelters) to catch the bus back to town. We weren't drenched through but we were wet enough to require a change of clothes.  The rain had been enough to cause some street flooding in town so any proposed shopping we wanted to do had to be done ASAP. This was completed reasonably quickly but I got wet feet walking through 20mls of floodwater.

Finding free WiFi in town wasn't a priority because of the rush for time and the wet weather. Standing around in wettish clothes didn't help either so the missing photos for the previous blog will be uploaded if possible at Darwin.

The wait to catch a bus back to the ship was a mere 30 minutes, a relative wink of an eye compared to the wait we had to get into town. My supply of VB cans in our cabin was a very welcome sight after arriving back at the ship and jumping in to dry clothes.

A hearty meal, an entertaining Floor Show and a 90 minute Rock 'n Roll band on stage under the stars completed a long day.

Both Friday and Saturday are days at sea.  On Thursday the ship sailed close to the Kimberley Coast providing all passengers with sensational close up views of red cliffs and the glorious colours in the sunset (photo above).  The ship stopped for over 15 minutes giving passengers on either side of the a wonderful Kimberley experience.

There was footy to watch live over the weekend. Hawthorn played and won on Friday as Geelong did on Saturday. On Saturday it was Patsy's birthday so we celebrated with a Steakhouse Restaurant meal.

The weather on deck currently is very hot and steamy.

We arrive in Darwin on Sunday.

In Broome

Getting from the Sun Princess to Geraldton on Monday turned out to be quite a huge task.  Geraldton is a 'tender'  port where we go ashore using the ship's lifeboats to land as the harbour is too shallow for the ship to navigate safely.  Previously this has been a reasonably time consuming task but this time getting to Geraldton took us over an hour on board waiting to be called and then a further 20 minutes for the trip itself.   We wanted to leave the ship around 10 am but by the time things actually happened it was around 11 before we even departed the Sun Princess.

The highlight of the day ashore was visiting the HMAS Australia Memorial as per the photos. In the top photo you can see the ship anchored off shore in the background while the other photo below shows the major section of the Memorial display.

We walked around Geraldton and got a bit of a feel for the place.  It is a lovely clean city with wide streets, numerous historical buildings and a delightful foreshore area.

After the debacle which was getting ashore we made sure we were back on board early for a bite to eat followed by happy hour. Usually a can of beer costs around $6 but the deal was buy one and get the next for $1. That made it around $3:50 a can which is more than reasonable.

I bought 3x2 cans, 3 I drank at the bar and 3 which found their way into the cabin's bar fridge. It was all very pleasant.

Wednesday would be our first full 'day at sea'.  We are not accustomed to a day at sea from our previous cruise so this was to be a new experience for us, one we would need to get used to on this cruise. Our day went eat, explore, drink, eat, explore, rest on our balcony, drink, rest on our balcony and then eat and drink some more and finally enjoy the ship's entertainment.

We caught up with friends Patsy and Eddie throughout the day. More often it was only with Patsy as Eddie  continually found himself 'lost' on the ship.  This is not hard to do.

There is no mobile phone connection out off the coast where we are.

So again on Wednesday it will was eat, explore and rest on our balcony. After another 'happy hour' the small bar fridge in our cabin has enough supplies for any emergency.  There has been a noticeable increase is the daily temperature as we head further north. There are times when our air conditioned cabin becomes quite a haven.

We did find a pleasant spot in the shade above the pool Wednesday afternoon and spent some relaxing time there before Happy Hour.  The temperature was now well over 30 so it was quite warm poolside unlike the chilly water in all the pools.

Thursday we arrived in Broome despite stormy skies and the occasional squall with winds reaching 50 knots. For a time it seemed we wouldn't be able to dock but the squall soon passed and we arrived in town. The port is some way out of Broome so shuttle buses were provided.

Geraldton

We are aboard the Sun Princess just off Geraldton in WA. The weather is sunny and we have settled in to life on a cruise. We will take a tender ashore shortly.

We have caught up with friends Eddie and Patsy and despite a few hassles with bags we all sorted and settled. Today will be quite laid back and not very strenuous.

The ship has all we need but things generally seem a tier down compared to life on the New Amsterdam on our cruise last year around the Mediterranean.  The cabins are smaller than last year, the shower not the same, the food in the casual dining is served on melamine plates but on the positive side drinks are less costly.

Because of some problems the stop at Cairns has been cancelled giving us one time when we have 4 days at sea. For those still working this is a bonus, for those of us who aren't working it may be a disadvantage.

As the photo shows this is a 'tender' port where passengers wanting to go ashore are ferried between the ship and the land by the ship's life boats.

So if I manage to post this entry it will mean I have found a free WiFi spot on shore.